


Earning Your Keep

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Comedy, Employment, F/M, Fast Food, Gen, no regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ME3.  It's tough being a dextro trapped on a levo world, and Garrus is not lovin' it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earning Your Keep

It was a chaotic time, but that just meant there was a lot to do, which was good, because throwing himself into his work was the only thing that kept him sane—that kept any of them sane, kept them from asking the big questions when there were so many little ones to address.  _Why_ EDI had suddenly reverted to her VI programming mattered less than fixing her, because without her half the _Normandy_ 's systems simply refused to respond to even the gentlest of calibrations, and so he and Tali pulled up all the information her omni-tool could hold about AI and Reaper tech, ordered Joker out of the AI Core, and set about trying to rewire hardware clearly designed for engineers with five fingers, not three. Adams and his crew were busy trying to repair the thrusters anyway, and the dextros were determined not to let Cerberus tech get the best of them.  And eventually it worked, and they convinced the VI to take the programming, and it took her forty-one hours to process her memories and assimilate into a coherent personality—not quite the EDI they'd known, but Joker insisted that she devote at least some of her processing power to listening to every joke they'd exchanged, and that, almost bizarrely, if they still believed in the bizarre, seemed to help.

Anyway with EDI back online the repairs went much more smoothly, and soon enough the _Normandy_ was back in the skies, course set for Earth.  There was the problem of the broken relay, but if one can handwave Kai Leng's entire existence, one ought to be able to see that a breaking relay couldn't've shot the Normandy too far beyond the Sol system, and there were plenty of salvageable ships between there and Earth from which they could scrounge fuel.  Still, it was tight, and double-checking EDI's calculations filled time that could have been spent worrying and wondering.

And then they got within comm range and there were thousands of messages, distress calls, reports—cries of chaos, waiting to be sorted.  And as they ran errands they kept sorting until finally Liara—well, Glyph, actually, and the drone was curiously insistent on clarifying his role for a VI—found the record they were looking for: a hospital admittance, human, female, badly damaged but breathing, Citadel wreckage, _N7_.

After much arguing—the _Normandy_ still had missions, obligations, duties, after all—they settled on the ground team: Steve won the shuttle-flying coin toss, to Joker's displeasure; James arm-wrestled Ash and, while she had him pinned, pulled her rank card and said the _Normandy_ needed a proper OIC and it wasn't going to be him.  Liara assured them that Glyph would be perfectly capable of carrying out her duties while she searched for answers for the source, and Tali just appeared in the last open seat with a glint off her facemask that dared anyone to disagree.  Garrus settled next to her, fairly certain the safety harness and common sense were the only things keeping him from skydiving to the hospital.  Those, and a lack of knowledge of basic Earth geography. 

Kansas had mostly avoided Reaper attention due to being a rural area, and as such it was one of the few areas with a semi-functioning infrastructure.  Steve and James had no real helpful information about the area, other than something about tornadoes and rainbows, and upon stepping out of the shuttle Garrus's initial reaction was, oddly enough, _she would hate driving the Mako here_.

This was a terrible reaction, because it stirred up all the fears and worries and wonderings, and he knew it was bad because while Liara babbled nonsense, Tali clasped his wrist in brief solidarity before they set off after the humans towards the hospital.  James sweet-talked his way through the nurses, leaving the rest of them standing awkwardly in the lobby until finally someone came and apologized—the patient they'd come to see was currently unconscious, and they were welcome to stay in the adjacent hotel until she woke up.

"Sounds great," James said, reappearing because he'd come along with the nurse but it hadn't been previously mentioned, and then he muttered, "ICU room 327," in Garrus's bad ear (well, the ear itself was bad, the cybernetics were awesome) and nodded in the general direction of the elevators.

Elevators.  More memories.  He tried not to fidget as he waited out the ride, tried to stride confidently down corridors that were occasionally too low-ceilinged for his fringe.  Everyone he encountered was human, and everyone he encountered stared at him, and it was a relief to find room 327 unlocked and empty aside from several beeping monitors and the unconscious body of the woman he loved.

Yeah.  The part where he stared at her and wondered if she would ever wake up—where he talked to her, trying to make light of the situation, scolding her for breaking the relays because of course once wasn't enough—the part where she looked a little more like the Shepard he'd first met, because now she was covered with scars, though these were half-healed and glowed in a way those hadn't—that part was depressing.  But eventually he fell asleep holding her hand, and eventually he woke up and realized he was hungry.

  

"Pay?" he said, standing in front of a cashless register manned by an actual human being, holding his bowl of dextro sludge—"porridge," they'd labeled it—and blinking.

"Y-yes," said the cashlessier, blinking back, shifting her weight from foot to foot in a way that suggested she wasn't used to turians.  This was Kansas, after all.  "You'll have to pay.  Earth money.  We don't take Council credits."

"I don't have any Earth money."

They stared at each other for a long time, and then she straightened and took a deep breath and said, "Just because you won a few battles in the Contact Wars doesn't mean you can barge in here and steal our food!"

"You can't even eat—all right, all right," Garrus said, setting the bowl down in front of her and backing away.  "I'll go get some money."

  

"Dollars?  Are you kidding me?" James said around a mouthful of omelet.  Garrus had gone to the hotel room to seek help.  "Ain't nobody in here got dollars for you, man."

"Sorry," Steve said, actually looking apologetic as he swallowed a bite of toast, "but all my money was in accounts on the colonies.  I haven't checked to see if I still have any."

"I could counterfeit some for you," Liara offered, daintily licking away the remains of a pastry.

"No, they don't trust me as is," Garrus said.  Something struck him as—he looked around the room, gaze finally settling on Tali sucking dextro porridge through her emergency induction port.  "Wait."

"Hm?" Tali said.

"How did all of you get food?"

"We're Alliance heroes," James said, as though this was obvious.  "They just gave it to us."

"Liara's not."

"Asari," Liara said, shrugging and failing to pull off the "I'm an innocent archeologist" look.

"What's your excuse?"

Tali's slurping was entirely unperturbed.  "I threatened to sic the geth on them."

"You did not," Liara said.

Tali waved a hand.  "Vaguely insinuated it was possible."

"It's not, though," Liara said.  "The geth—"

"—will be up and running as soon as my people have finished the repairs," Tali said, slurping again.  "Guess you'd better get a job, Garrus."

"A job?" Garrus said.  "Where would I get a job?"

Steve and James exchanged a look.  "Well," James said, "what we humans usually do is—"

  

"Welcome to Mac-Doon-ald's," Garrus droned to the terrified human in front of him.  "How may I serve you today?"

"Um," said the terrified human.

"Mommy!" cried a child farther back in the line.  "Mommy a turian!"

A woman's stifled sob followed.

("I told you we shouldn't have had him work the front," the assistant manager said to the manager back in the supply room.  Garrus's bad ear heard it all.)

"I—I'd like a—a quarter pounder," the human finally said.  Garrus slid his eyepiece down in order to focus on the tiny keypad located a good half-meter short of where he needed it to be.

"Quarter pounder," he mused, scrolling through the menu choices.  "Quarter pounder quarter—ah, there it is.  Now," he looked up, and his eyepiece registered the human's heat index had spiked three degrees, "would you like fries with that?"

("I don't know," the manager said, "I think his voice is kind of sexy.")

"Y-yes.  Make it a c-c-combo," the customer said.

"Can I touch it, Mommy?  Can I?"

"That'll be ten dollars," Garrus informed him.

"Inflation, man," someone commented.

"That's the war for you," the customer said, nervously glancing back at Garrus.

("Then have him work the window," the assistant manager said.  "But for the love of our sales, pull him off the front.")

"And we're all on the same side," Garrus said.  That wasn't strictly true—all the humans were either customers on the other side of the counter, or coworkers hiding in the kitchen—and it didn't seem to relax the people in front of him.  He tried to approximate a human smile.

"Oh, God," came another half-stifled sob.

"All right, Garrus," the manager said, coming out and flipping her ponytail over her shoulder for some unfathomable reason—although she _was_ smiling at him oddly.  "Come with me, and we'll see if we can't find something you're more suitable for."

  

"You got _fired_?" Steve said.

"No," Garrus said.

"From _McDonald’s_?" James hooted.

Garrus forced another spoonful of porridge down his throat and refused to answer.  The stuff didn't even taste good—probably the only thing they could reprogram their food processors to create on such short notice, not that they'd know how it tasted—although according to Joker, all hospital food was nasty; on Palaven, it had been merely bland.

"That's..."  Liara blinked, and tried again.  "From what I've read, that's..."

"Garrus has many special talents," Tali said.

"I was not _fired_ , I was _let go_ ," Garrus said.  "And they paid me, so that's what matters."

"Face it, man," James said, grinning.  "You got fired from McDonald's."

"I didn't fit with the company's direction," Garrus said feebly.

"Aw, man," Steve said.  "That's harsh."

"'Cause you _sucked_ ," James said.

"I did not," Garrus said.  "I followed orders exactly.  I mean, I performed a vital service for them," warming up to his indignation, "and did they even say thank you?"

Steve shook his head.  "Sounds like you got used."

"You couldn't even sell a couple of burgers," James said.  "Archangel, terror of Mickey D's."

He didn't really have a comeback to that, but luckily at that moment Liara's omnitool, which was conveniently hacked into the hospital's records, dinged the only ding it was programmed to ding, the ding dong of an update, the ding dong of—

Everyone looked to Liara, who looked to her omnitool, then back up at them.  Her blue eyes serious, she set her face and said, "We should go."

  

For indeed Shepard was awake, and quite surprised to see all of them, but happiness filled the tired lines on her face, and she barely had to lift her fingers before Garrus was carefully sliding his between them.  The doctors weren't exactly happy about the presence of three aliens in their patients' room—well, they seemed pretty okay with Liara—but Garrus decided he didn't really care if they were scared of him or not, and after a few days of sitting with Shepard, talking with her, making her do her therapy exercises, assuring her he liked glowing faces as much as krogan ladies liked scars, they got used to him.

Shepard liked the occasional workout mix, while others in the therapy center had different musical tastes, and sometimes they were forced to suffer through forms of popular music from various human colonies, the occasional classical symphony, or—and no one would ever fess to setting the music player to it—hanar meditation scripts.  Sometimes, however, the supervising therapist would call a truce and turn on the local radio station.  Garrus was fascinated by the radio—he didn't think such technology still existed, let alone was in use—and although Shepard refused to allow him to dismantle the one in the therapy room, she did promise to buy him one of his very own once she was well enough to shop.

But there was a radio, and it played commercials, and so it came to pass that one day while he was sitting in the corner of the room, scrolling through casualty reports on his omnitool, he suddenly heard a familiar voice reciting familiar words, and before he could hide his face behind the display he heard the _thunk_ of Shepard's weights dropping to the ground, and the curiosity that killed the cat caused him to look over and see the intense expression on her face as she listened to a commercial with more attention than anyone had ever paid it, before or since:

" _It's actually a McDonald's Filet-o-Fish finder.  Its one and only job is to find tasty delicious one-of-a-kind Filet-o-Fish sandwiches.  It hones right in on that delicious tangy tartar sauce and melty cheese getting CLOSER BY THE—_ "

"Garrus?" Shepard said, and never had he been more embarrassed to hear his own name.  "Why are you on the radio?"

"Needed money," he mumbled, his shame warring with the warmth from the slowly growing smile of delight on her face.

"And so you advertised fish sandwiches."

"Maybe."

"For _McDonald’s_."

"I thought you liked McDonald's!"

"McDonald's was all I could afford as a kid," she said.  "And the Filet-o-Fish?  Really?  Have you ever even seen what they call fish?"

"No..."

"You couldn't advertise a good North American burger?"

"I—"

"Filet-o-Fish finder," she said, shaking her head.  "Tell me, how long does it take to calibrate _that_?"

He stared at her until she finally cracked a full smile, until she doubled over laughing, and he tried so hard to keep the sarcasm in his voice as he said, "I love you too."

She caught her breath and looked up at him, her glinty eyes and half-missing skin still catching the nuances of her expression—and when did he learn to read a human so well? and how was it as natural as settling a target in his scope?—and then a moment later it was gone, and she said, "Tangy tartar sauce?"

"Yes."

"And melty cheese?"

"Yep."

She shook her head and smiled that fond little smile she had, just for him. "I'm Commander Shepard...and that's my favorite sandwich at McDonald's."

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this: loquaciousquark.tumblr.com/post/45781512219/dude-apparently-likes-fish
> 
>  
> 
> I have no regrets.


End file.
